Filed under: Ad Astra, Astronomy, Brave New World, Connections, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, UFO, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, HST, Hubble, Israel, jim downey, Moon, NASA, Newton, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, Transit, travel, Venus, Wfirst, writing
* * * * * * *
From Chapter 1:
Jon spoke. “That’s typical. Sidwell is a bit of an old coot. He’s about 80, close as anyone can get him to admit. He has been at the forefront of exploration all along, having started with the Israeli colonies on the Moon, and was one of the first prospectors to establish himself on Titan.”
* * * * * * *
NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy
The secretive government agency that flies spy satellites has made a stunning gift to NASA: two exquisite telescopes as big and powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope. They’ve never left the ground and are in storage in Rochester, N.Y.
* * *
The telescopes were built by private contractors for the National Reconnaissance Office, one of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The telescopes have 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirrors, just like the Hubble, but they have 100 times the field of view. Their structure is shorter and squatter.
* * *
The announcement Monday raised the obvious question of why the intelligence agency would no longer want, or need, two Hubble-class telescopes. A spokeswoman, Loretta DeSio, provided information sparingly.
“They no longer possessed intelligence-collection uses,” she said of the telescopes.
* * * * * * *
“The Israeli colonies on the Moon?” When did that happen?
Now.
One of the plot points for St. Cybi’s Well all along has been that Darnell Sidwell had been a shuttle pilot for a secret operation by Israel (with the tacit support of most of the governments of the major world powers) to establish permanent colonies on the far side of the Moon. That effort was well along by 2012, which is when the novel is set.
Remember, the timeline for Communion of Dreams isn’t exactly our timeline. It is very, very similar to ours, but there are some divergences.
The biggest worry I have had for some time was how to say that such a space program could exist without people knowing about it. In fact, earlier work on St. Cybi’s Well revolved around this very point as an espionage/counter-espionage sub-plot. I was concerned that it might be *too* outlandish an idea for readers to be able to suspend their disbelief.
So much for that concern; we’ve just found out that what we thought was at the limits of our technology is so obsolete that it can be handed off as so much surplus junk. And the implication is that while NASA is currently without the means to launch and service something like Hubble, that there are plenty other agencies within our government which are not so inconvenienced.
* * * * * * *
Ex-Spy Telescope May Get New Identity as a Space Investigator
The phone call came like a bolt out of the blue, so to speak, in January 2011. On the other end of the line was someone from the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the nation’s fleet of spy satellites. They had some spare, unused “hardware” to get rid of. Was NASA interested?
* * *
The telescope’s short length means its camera could have the wide field of view necessary to inspect large areas of the sky for supernovae.
Even bigger advantages come, astronomers say, from the fact that the telescope’s diameter, 94 inches, is twice as big as that contemplated for Wfirst, giving it four times the light-gathering power, from which a whole host of savings cascade.
* * * * * * *
From Sir Isaac Newton’s translation of the Emerald Tablet:
Tis true without lying, certain most true.
That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
And as all things have been arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.
The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
– Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.It ascends from the earth to the heaven again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
And yes, that is a hint about another part of what’s to come in St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
Enjoy today’s Transit. As above, so below.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Emergency, Failure, Heinlein, ISS, NASA, National Geographic, Preparedness, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, Survival, tech, Weather | Tags: blogging, Diane Rehm, Everest, health, Heinlein, ISS, jim downey, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, SpaceX, stupidity, survival, technology
Following up from Sunday…
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
* * * * * * *
There was a very interesting discussion on the Diane Rehm show the other day with Stuart Firestein, who is the chairman of the Department of Biology at Columbia University as well as a professor of neuroscience. The whole thing is worth a listen, but in particular there were a couple of particular bits I wanted to share. Here’s the first:
So in your brain cells, one of the ways your brain cells communicate with each other is using a kind of electricity, bioelectricity or voltages. And we’re very good at recording electrical signals. I mean, your brain is also a chemical. Like the rest of your body it’s a kind of chemical plant. But part of the chemistry produces electrical responses.
And because our technology is very good at recording electrical responses we’ve spent the last 70 or 80 years looking at the electrical side of the brain and we’ve learned a lot but it steered us in very distinct directions, much — and we wound up ignoring much of the biochemical side of the brain as a result of it. And as it now turns out, seems to be a huge mistake in some of our ideas about learning and memory and how it works.
* * * * * * *
I stared at the body, blinking in disbelief. We were in the shadow of the First Step, so the light was dull. The body lay about 10 metres from where I stood and was angled away from me. It jerked – a horrible movement, like a puppet being pulled savagely by its strings.
We had been on a well-organised and, so far, successful trail towards the summit of Everest, worrying only about ourselves. Now a stranger lay across our path, moaning. Lhakpa shouted down at me and waved me to move on, to follow him up onto the Step. I looked back at the raggedly jerking figure.
* * * * * * *
From about halfway through Chapter 6 in Communion of Dreams:
“But smart how?”
Jon looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are lots of kinds of intelligence, and I’m not just talking about the reasoning/emotional/spatial/mechanical sorts of distinctions that we sometimes make. More fundamentally, how are they smart? Are they super-geniuses, able to easily figure out problems that stump us? Or maybe they’re very slow, but have been at this a very long time. Perhaps some sort of collective or racial intelligence, while each individual member of their species can barely put two and two together. There are a lot of different ways they can be intelligent.”
* * * * * * *
(Warning – the page from which the following comes contains gruesome images and text.)
Above a certain altitude, no human can ever acclimatize. Known as the Death Zone, only on 14 mountains worldwide can one step beyond the 8000 meter mark and know that no amount of training or conditioning will ever allow you to spend more than 48 hours there. The oxygen level in the Death Zone is only one third of the sea level value, which in simple terms means the body will use up its store of oxygen faster than breathing can replenish it.
In such conditions, odd things happen to human physical and mental states. A National Geographic climber originally on Everest to document Brian Blessed’s (ultimately botched) attempt at summiting, described the unsettling hallucinogenic effects of running out of oxygen in the Death Zone. The insides of his tent seemed to rise above him, taking on cathedral-like dimensions, robbing him of all strength, clouding his judgement. Any stay in the Death Zone without supplementary oxygen is like being slowly choked, all the while having to perform one of the hardest physical feats imaginable.
It makes you stupid.
* * * * * * *
Again, Stuart Firestein:
And in neuroscience, I can give you an example in the mid-1800s, phrenology. This idea that the bumps on your head, everybody has slightly different bumps on their head due to the shape of their skull. And you could tell something about a person’s personality by the bumps on their head. Now, we joke about it now. You can buy these phrenology busts in stores that show you where love is and where compassion is and where violence is and all that. It’s absolutely silly, but for 50 years it existed as a real science. And there are papers from learned scientists on it in the literature.
* * * * * * *
Update at 12:10 p.m. ET. Dragon Has Docked:
Dragon has finished docking with the International Space Station. That makes SpaceX the first private company to dock a cargo spacecraft to the space station.
That happened at exactly 12:02 p.m. ET, according to NASA.
* * * * * * *
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Last weekend four more people died attempting to summit Everest. Partly, this seems to have been due to the traffic on the mountain. Yeah, so many people are now attempting to climb the mountain that there are bottlenecks which occur, which can throw off calculations about how long a climb will take, how much supplemental oxygen is necessary, and whether weather will move in before climbers can reach safety.
In theory, everyone who attempts such a climb should know the odds. One in ten people who attempted the summit have died.
But we live in an age of accepted wonders. We think we’re smart enough to beat the odds.
Jim Downey
(PS: I hope to wrap up the third & final part of this set, get it posted this weekend.)
Filed under: Apollo program, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Stross, Failure, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, tech, Travel | Tags: Apollo, Buzz Aldrin, jim downey, Michael Collins, Moon, NASA, Neil Armstrong, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, travel, xkcd
As something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, first a quote:
The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space — each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
That’s the “roll over” text of this xkcd cartoon:
Can you name the nine who are left?*
And related to that, here is an excellent hour-long item you really should check out when you get a chance:
An Audience with Neil Armstrong
It’s in four parts, so you can watch them in chunks. And it really is very good. Armstrong has given very few interviews over the years, and has always been remarkably self-effacing. This is an informal discussion with the man, and it provides some wonderful insight into the whole NASA program in addition to the mindset which led to the Apollo 11 mission.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, DARPA, Feedback, Google Lunar X Prize, Government, Kindle, Marketing, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Space | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, DARPA, direct publishing, free, health, jim downey, Kindle, literature, Mother's Day, NASA, reviews, Science Fiction, space
No, this isn’t about NASA, some secret DARPA project, the military, or even any of the private companies involved in space vehicle development. Though those are all things I pay attention to.
Rather, it’s about tomorrow’s Mother’s Day promotion, mentioned previously.
Huh?
Well, I’m just extending the “book launch” metaphor, perhaps too far. But it beats comparing it to a nuclear reaction, I suppose.
Anyway.
Sales of Communion of Dreams have not just been steady, they’ve been slowly climbing this month, with the result that the Amazon Kindle ranking has now been hovering around 4,000 overall, and in the low 30s for a couple different categories of Science Fiction. And more people are writing reviews which are very positive.
Each time previously that I ran a free Kindle edition promotion, there was a following surge in sales, with things then leveling off. The most recent promotional day resulted in this fairly decent level of sales we’re currently seeing. And I’m really curious to see whether this push tomorrow will kick it up yet another substantial, self-sustaining level.
And of course I’m hoping that it will also do good things not just for the memoir, but also for John’s new book (which I am looking forward to reading, myself!)
Keep your fingers crossed. Better yet, help spread the word. Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Arthur C. Clarke, Astronomy, Carl Sagan, ISS, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Music, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: 2001, art, aurora, direct publishing, free, jim downey, Kindle, music, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, video, writing, www youtube
From Chapter 3:
Wright Station was one of the older stations, and its age showed in its design. The basic large wheel structure, necessary when centrifugal force simulated gravity, was still evident, though significantly altered. The station hung there as they approached, motionless. The aero slowly coasted toward a large box well outside the sweep of the wheel, connected to the wheel by an extension of one of the major spokes. This was the dock, and it was outside the AG field.
Sound familiar?
Though I do think that were someone to film Communion of Dreams, this scene would more closely reflect this reality, taken from the ISS:
Still, it is fascinating that we have already so deeply connected music with space imagery. And that what is seen as a pale blue dot in the distance is, up close, a living world with a thin sheath of atmosphere – a wisp, glowing green.
Tomorrow is a promotional day: the Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams will be free for any and all to download. Share the news.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Astronomy, Book Conservation, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, NASA, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Space | Tags: Amazon, direct publishing, jim downey, Kindle, NASA, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, writing
Two items.
One: Yesterday’s post was the most popular thing I’ve written here in years. Actually, I think it might be the second-best ever. Go figure.
(Well, three. I should mention this other item.)
Two: Possibly related, though things were doing quite well even before yesterday’s post – so far this month we’ve sold almost 50 copies (mostly Kindle) of Communion of Dreams. Thanks, everyone!
(No, make that four. Damn, forgot about this one.)
Three: Got another review. And it serves as a nice counterpoint to all those who enjoyed the book.
(Finally.)
And lastly, which I intended to be my second point all along: this very cool site showing relative scale of our solar system. I’ve seen this attempted a number of times and different ways online, but this is the best I’ve come across yet:
OMG SPACE is the thesis project of Margot Trudell, an OCAD student studying graphic design in Toronto, Canada. This website aims to illustrate the scale and the grandeur of our solar system, as well as illustrate through the use of infographics our work in the exploration of our solar system with various spacecraft.
And now I need to turn my attention to some book conservation work I want to wrap up. Cheers!
Jim Downey
Filed under: NASA, Science, Space | Tags: jim downey, NASA, science, space, video, www youtube
Pretty cool little vid:
Just had to share that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: gratuitous sex, literature, suspenseful novel, writing
One of the more enjoyable aspects of having Communion of Dreams out there is the consistently positive response it is generating. Reading reviews, seeing what others post about it in comments & blog posts, getting messages – all of these help affirm that the work which went into writing the book was worthwhile.
This morning I opened my CoD inbox to find a very nice message from someone who had just read the book. After favorably commenting on my book, and then relating some other books by VERY big-name authors he had read recently, he said this:
The [other author’s] novel mentioned was, I think, his best to date, and while it ended beautifully, there was a darkness behind it that left a tragic feeling when I was done. The other two are very, very grim indeed. I mention all of these because in the absence of the awe and sense of newness of the pioneers of science fiction, most authors take the route of being deliberately cynical–often bolster their flagging motivation with plenty of sex.
I am greatly impressed that you have created a suspenseful novel without gratuitous sex or violence, and paint a hopeful human picture in what could easily have been the run-of-the-mill depressing post-apocalyptic world.
I have to chuckle – it seems almost like a back-handed compliment, though I know it wasn’t intended that way. And in truth, he’s quite right. In fact, this is what I said in regards to that in my return note:
Thanks – both the core story and the decision to leave out the gratuitous sex & violence was very deliberate (as you know) because I wanted the book to be akin to the SF I enjoyed in my own youth. I wanted not just my contemporaries to enjoy the book, but for it to be enjoyable by their kids and grandkids. I agree that it is impossible at this point to recapture the innocent optimism of Clarke and others, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to again find optimism in understanding the limitations of the world – I think we’ve lost that in the last couple of decades.
Anyway – yeah, I’m guilty of being a cynical old bastard. But my book isn’t.
And on that note, a reminder that today is a promotional day: you can get the Kindle edition for free, all day. Help me get the word out, if you would be so kind.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Guns, Predictions, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Writing stuff
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
* * * * * * *
Bits & pieces:
“It is late, and things are not getting better.”
“A gun don’t make you bulletproof.”
“Tribal groups who all have their chieftains.”
* * * * * * *
I’ve had false starts, and false hope, before. In some ways, “false hope” is something of a summary of my life.
Anyway, I’ve been doing a *lot* of thinking about the prequel to Communion of Dreams, titled St. Cybi’s Well. I think this is the fourth of fifth time that I’ve started writing it. Before I’ve gotten as far as a chapter or two, outlines for more of the book. Or sometimes just making notes.
This time? We’ll see. At least some people are asking about it after reading Communion. That helps.
* * * * * * *
Yeah, bits & pieces. But none of those . . . fragments . . . necessarily means what it might seem. As I work through a story, I get these summations, these insights into something a character might think or do. I’ve been thinking a lot about Darnell Sidwell, who is the main character of St. Cybi’s Well. That much I’ve known all along.
And thinking about Darnell is risky. Why? Because he and I are tied together in some ways. Well, more than just occupying too much space in my head, I mean. He’s not an alter-ego of mine or anything, but we are close enough in age and cultural experience that I can’t help but compare myself to him at times. And the comparisons don’t always make me particularly happy.
* * * * * * *
For whatever reason, recently I’ve had an interest in pickled eggs.
Not sure why. I don’t remember eating them as a kid or anything. Frankly, I don’t remember ever having eaten one, though I’m sure I must have.
Eggs. Vinegar. Sugar, salt, spices. I like the way the kitchen smells now.
Sometimes you have to experiment.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 